"Nobody is concerned with my reputation of last year, Laurent."
"That's just it!" cried Laurent angrily. "Oh, if only I were defending you!—Why is no one defending you, so that he could bring it forward, since you are so damnably proud that you will not do it yourself? All the time yesterday one could watch points that ought to have been made in your favour going unheeded, just because to emphasize them involved a little blowing of your own trumpet. And I suppose it will be the same to-day! Others may think it modesty—perhaps you think so yourself—but I tell you it is pride, rank, ineradicable pride! You are as proud as Lucifer!"
After which outburst, almost in tears, he put his head down on his arms on the breakfast-table. Aymar stood and looked at him.
"I did not know you had such powers of denunciation, Laurent."
"It is of no use denouncing you," said the muffled voice. "You will not do any differently." He lifted his head. "The only thing that would be of the slightest benefit to-day would be for me to change—to become, if only I could, Saint-Etienne for an hour."
"Do you think I want you changed, even for poor Saint-Etienne?" asked Aymar gently, laying a hand on his shoulder. "I don't want you to be anybody but yourself, Laurent.—Come we must start. You have no need to pretend to forget your sword to-day, my poor knight-errant!"
(10)
Just outside the Hôtel de Ville Laurent saw de Fresne. He went straight up to him.
"I want to beg your pardon, Monsieur de Fresne, for what I said to you a little while ago about that letter. It was cruel and unjust."
De Fresne looked at him with those hard blue eyes of his. "It was certainly cruel. Do you think I have never said that same thing to myself these three months?" He began to pale under his tan. "I have said it a hundred times. But, as you pointed out——"